roat from spilling into my words.
Henry walks around the counter, stands in front of me, but doesn't touch me,
knows that he can't touch me. "Clare. The next time you miscarry it's going to kill
you, and I am not going to keep doing something that's going to end up with you
dead. Five pregnancies.. .I know you want to try again, but I can't. I can't take it
anymore, Clare. I'm sorry."
I walk out the back door and stand in the sun, by the raspberry bushes. Our
children, dead and wrapped in silky gampi tissue paper, cradled in tiny wooden
boxes, are in shade now, in the late afternoon, by the roses. I feel the heat of the
sun on my skin and shiver for them, deep in the garden, cool on this mild June
day. Help, I say in my head, to our future child. He doesn't know, so I can't tell him.
Come soon.
Friday, June 9, 2000/November 19, 1986 (Henry is 36, Clare is 15)
Henry: It's 8:45 a.m. on a Friday morning and I'm sitting in the waiting room of a
certain Dr. Robert Gonsalez. Clare doesn't know I'm here. I've decided to get a
vasectomy.
Dr. Gonsalez's office is on Sheridan Road, near Diversey, in a posh medical
center just up the way from the Lincoln Park Conservatory. This waiting room is
decorated in browns and hunter green, lots of paneling and framed prints of
Derby winners from the 1880s. Very manly. I feel as though I should be wearing a
smoking jacket and clenching a large cigar between my jaws. I need a drink.
The nice woman at Planned Parenthood assured me in her soothing, practiced
voice that this would hardly hurt a bit. There are five other guys sitting here with
me. I wonder if they've got the clap, or maybe their prostates are acting up.
Maybe some of them are like me, sitting here waiting to end their careers as
potential dads. I feel a certain solidarity with these unknown men, all of us
sitting here together in this brown wooden leather room on this gray morning
waiting to walk into the examining room and take off our pants. There's a very
old man who sits leaning forward with his hands clasped around his cane, his
eyes closed behind thick glasses that magnify his eyelids. He's probably not here
to get snipped. The teenage boy who sits leafing through an ancient copy of
Esquire is feigning indifference. I close my eyes and imagine that I am in a bar and
the bartender has her back to me now as she mixes a good single-malt Scotch
with just a small amount of tepid water. Perhaps it's an English pub. Yes, that
would account for the decor. The man on my left coughs, a deep lung-shaking
sort of cough, and when I open my eyes I'm still sitting in a doctor's waiting
room. I sneak a look at the watch of the guy on my right. He's got one of those
immense sports watches that you can use to time sprints or call the mothership.
It's 9:58. My appointment is in two minutes. The doctor seems to be running late,
though. The receptionist calls, "Mr. Liston," and the teenager stands up abruptly
and walks through the heavy paneled door into the office. The rest of us look at
each other, furtively, as though we are on the subway and someone is trying to
sell us Streetwise.
I am rigid with tension and I remind myself that this is a necessary and good
thing that I am about to do. I am not a traitor. I am not a traitor. I am saving Clare
from horror and pain. She will never know. It will not hurt. Maybe it will hurt a
little. Someday I will tell her and she will realize I had to do it. We tried. I have
no choice. I am not a traitor. Even if I hurts it will be worth it. I am doing it
because I love her. I think of Clare sitting on our bed, covered in blood, weeping,
and I feel sick.
"Mr. DeTamble." I rise, and now I really feel sick. My knees buckle. My head
swims, and I'm bent over, retching, I'm on my hands and knees, the ground is
cold and covered with the stubble of dead grass. There's nothing in my stomach,
I'm spitting up mucous. It's cold. I look up. I'm in the clearing, in the Meadow.
The trees are bare, the sky is flat clouds with early darkness approaching. I'm
alone.
I get up and find the clothes box. Soon I am wearing a Gang of Four T-shirt
and a sweater and jeans, heavy socks and black military boots, a black wool
overcoat and large baby blue mittens. Something has chewed its way into the box
and made a nest. The clothes indicate the mid-eighties. Clare is about fifteen or
sixteen. I wonder whether to hang around and wait for her or just go. I don't
know if I can face Clare's youthful exuberance right now. I turn and walk toward
the orchard.
It looks like late November. The Meadow is brown, and makes a rattling noise
in the wind. Crows are fighting over windfall apples at the edge of the orchard.
Just as I reach them I hear someone panting, running behind me. I turn, and it's
Clare.
"Henry-" she's out of breath, she sounds like she has a cold. I let her stand,
rasping, for a minute. I can't talk to her. She stands, breathing, her breath
steaming in front of her in white clouds, her hair vivid red in the gray and brown,
her skin pink and pale.
I turn and walk into the orchard.
"Henry-" Clare follows me, catches my arm. "What? What did I do? Why
won't you talk to me?"
Oh God. "I tried to do something for you, something important, and it didn't
work. I got nervous, and ended up here."
"What was it?"
"I can't tell you. I wasn't even going to tell you about it in the present. You
wouldn't like it."
"Then why did you want to do it?" Clare shivers in the wind. "It was the only
way. I couldn't get you to listen to me. I thought we could stop fighting if I did
it." I sigh. I will try again, and, if necessary, again.
"Why are we fighting?" Clare is looking up at me, tense and anxious.
Her nose is running.
"Have you got a cold?"
"Yes. What are we fighting about?"
"It all began when the wife of your ambassador slapped the mistress of my
prime minister at a soiree being held at the embassy. This affected the tariff on
oatmeal, which led to high unemployment and rioting-"
"Henry."
"Yes?"
"Just once, just once, would you stop making fun of me and tell me something
I am asking you?"
"I can't."
Without apparent premeditation, Clare slaps me, hard. I step back, surprised,
glad.
"Hit me again."
She is confused, shakes her head. "Please, Clare."
"No. Why do you want me to hit you? I wanted to hurt you."
"I want you to hurt me. Please." I hang my head.
"What is the matter with you?"
"Everything is terrible and I can't seem to feel it."
" What is terrible? What is going on?"
"Don't ask me." Clare comes up, very close to me, and takes my hand, one
pulls off the ridiculous blue mitten, brings my palm to her mouth, and bites. The
pain is excruciating. She stops, and I look at my hand, Blood comes slowly, in
tiny drops, around the bite mark. I will probably get blood poisoning, but at the
moment I don't care.
"Tell me." Her face is inches from mine. I kiss her, very roughly. She is
resistant. I release her, and she turns her back on me.
"That wasn't very nice," she says in a small voice.
What is wrong with me? Clare, at fifteen, is not the same person who's been
torturing me for months, refusing to give up on having a baby, risking death and
despair, turning lovemaking into a battlefield strewn with the corpses of
children. I put my hands on her shoulders. "I'm sorry. I'm very sorry, Clare, it's
not you. Please."
She turns. She's crying, and she's a mess. Miraculously, there's a Kleenex in
my coat pocket. I dab at her face, and she takes the tissue from me and blows her
nose.
"You never kissed me before." Oh, no. My face must be funny, because Clare
laughs. I can't believe it. What an idiot I am.
"Oh, Clare, Just-forget that, okay? Just erase it. It never happened. Come here.
Take two, yes? Clare?"
She tentatively steps toward me. I put my arms around her, look at her. Her
eyes are rimmed red, her nose is swollen, and she definitely has a bad cold. I
place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put
my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again.
Friday, June 9, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 36)
Clare: Henry has been terribly quiet, distracted, and pensive all evening. All
through dinner he seemed to be mentally searching imaginary stacks for a book
he'd read in 1942 or something. Plus his right hand is all bandaged up. After
dinner he went into the bedroom and lay face down on the bed with his head
hanging over the foot of the bed and his feet on my pillow. I went to the studio
and scrubbed molds and deckles and drank my coffee, but I wasn't enjoying
myself because I couldn't figure out what Henry's problem was. Finally I go back
into the house. He is still lying in the same position. In the dark.
I lie down on the floor. My back makes loud cracking sounds as I stretch out.
"Clare?"
"Mmmm?"
"Do you remember the first time I kissed you?"
"Vividly."
"I'm sorry." Henry rolls over.
I'm burning up with curiosity. "What were you so upset about? You were
trying to do something, and it didn't work, and you said I wouldn't like it. What
was it?"
"How do you manage to remember all that?"
"I am the original elephant child. Are you going to tell me now?"
"No."
"If I guess will you tell me if I'm right?"
"Probably not."
"Why not?"
"Because I am exhausted, and I don't want to fight tonight."
I don't want to fight either. I like lying here on the floor. It's kind of cold but
very solid. "You went to get a vasectomy."
Henry is silent. He is so silent for so long that I want to put a mirror in front of
his mouth to see if he's breathing. Finally: "How did you know?"
"I didn't exactly know. I was afraid that might be it. And I saw the note you
made for the appointment with the doctor this morning."
"I burned that note."
"I saw the impression on the sheet below the one you wrote on."
Henry groans. "Okay, Sherlock. You got me." We continue to lie peaceably